Monthly Archives: November 2013

Back in design school they asked us to do a project involving multiples of something set in a series. So I started with a hand done in foam board and replicated it in card stock, set it in a spiral and mounted it on a skewer. I have no idea what it was meant to teach me other than the tedium of repetition. – Which is how one could look at practicing scales, I suppose, although I tend to look at that as a means to strengthen skills. No? Really? It was meant to be the same thing with the hand project? Oh, alright then. Probably not, though. It is more likely to have had something to do with perspective or depth or some such…

There are times that I wish I had more hands when I play guitar – and there are some guitarists that I watch or listen to that I would swear do have more than two. Dipping into the tedium of cutting foam board once again, which is, by the way a whole lot more tedious if you can’t find a sharp blade, I came up with this thing for this morning…

There is ice on the pond this morning – it was 23 degrees or something over night, so it is not surprising. I quite naturally got to thinking about an ice guitar. I did not, however, after standing out to take a photo of geese trying to find an open patch of water for a landing, feel much inclined to walk down there and punch out a guitar. Another day, perhaps, but well, not today. I live, however, in the spirit of the thing …

Craft project napkin rings made by the kids when they were little. They would be surprised to know that I still have them, which just proves how little they know me. ‘Tis the way of things. Happy Thanksgiving…may you take the time out of eating and football to count your blessings and be grateful.

Home again, practicing so that I can get up on stage tonight and feel totally inadequate…last night’s Bonnie Raitt concert was fantastic. Rode the wave all the way home, then crashed and burned in my own bed to rise this morning to know that I needed to come up with a guitar, and that I need a whole lot more practice with one.

It is getting colder. The rain was heavy last night and thick – not snow exactly, but dense. My friend Mary was driving, but even turns we both know well were hard to spot. Today, it is the same thing – by tonight, it may be snow. Over the river and through the woods tomorrow for Thanksgiving might just be more easily accomplished with a horse knowing the way…

Anyway, I don’t want to go outside this morning. I just don’t. So I am procrastinating with efficiency – loading the dishwasher, wiping the counters, making it up to the dogs that I was away overnight and they were forced to play with Mary Ann who undoubtedly spoiled and indulged them. Poor puppies. Yeah.

So I’m moving things from side to side. It looks busy. Folding up paper bags and wondering where I’m going to store them. Aha! At the risk of straining my hands with scissors right in advance of a performance, yes! I think I will do a mock up of a sculpture that I would very much like to render in sheet steel with an over all height of, say, 15 feet? Oh heck, let’s do two! One could be only 10 feet, I suppose. Yes, I can visualize these standing in a garden somewhere getting a nicely rusted patina…I’m going to have to raise some funds for this…and perhaps learn to weld…

day 318First time filing from the road…from The New Yorker Hotel in NYC. So lord knows how this will work. Went last night to see Van Morrison at Madison Square Garden. I’ve been waiting for this a long time. Happy, happy.

So I’m thinking that I’ll find some way cool lute or something to work with if I head out to The Cloisters. Nope. The band of collectors that put together the medieval collection that preserves for us the Unicorn tapestries had not one musical bone among them…or so you would deduce. The nearest I could get was a beautiful little psalter…but know that I was looking.

When I find things I like to eat, I tend to binge. Even more of too much information…but when avocados go on sale, and when they are dead ripe and perfect, and if tomorrow might send them just past that perfection – what am I supposed to do? Cut them in half, extract the pit and get a spoon. Yes, of course. These were small – it was not much of an effort.

I am careful about avocado, though. When I was in high school, a popular professor of philosophy from the University of Washington who used to drop by the house with a Volkswagen bus full of acolytes on his way to his retreat on the Olympic Peninsula came off of some extended fast by eating avocados. He died. I have no idea if he died because of the avocados, or because his Messiah complex kicked into high gear, but it has always made me stop and think about avocados – and Adrian – ever since.

I’m still, as you can imagine, playing with camera apps. This time, I did nothing but take the photo with an app that allows me to change the kind of lens and the kind of film I am using. This is the unaltered result…I’m not sure I like it, but there are things about it I like. It will be eons before I get through all of the options on this one app alone – and that is before I get into buying any of the in-app options, some of which are already beckoning…oh no! A whole new set of temptations. Just what I needed.

The day has finally arrived. I am completely without a clue for a guitar this morning. I’m looking into the toy box and nope, coming up empty. Will have to go back and contemplate this for awhile longer and hope for the best. But the wind is blowing a gale out there and it is cold – which makes me want nothing more than to build a fire and pour myself a cup of coffee….hey…wait a minute. I’ve done coffee in almost all forms, and except for that moment when I found a guitar in the crema – not BREWED coffee…

So yesterday I spent all day with Karen Messick’s workshop on the art of iPhonography. I have a friend who teaches it in Italy and I always thought I would take his workshop (and I may yet) but yesterday in Chestertown it was great too. And it gives me something entirely new to play with on guitar pictures…actually a whole lot of new apps to play with…you may not even know it the next time I hit you with macaron …

Going into winter as we are now, the vegetables change, as they should. I sort of miss seasonal eating – I’m as guilty as anyone of going to the grocery store and buying raspberries in November, even though there is a part of me that says this is just wrong. Butternut squash, on the other hand, makes me feel right. Makes me feel a little like that Gary Larson drawing called “Early Vegetarians Returning From the Hunt” where a bunch of cave people are going through a forest brandishing rakes and shovels, carrying a giant carrot. Yes, when I come home with what will eventually become a nice winter soup, I feel just like that…and if it is a perfect shape for scribing a guitar – now why would I fight it?

In these days of reduce, re-use, recycle, it amazes me that I still open bottles of vitamins with enough cotton stuffed into the bottle to spin and weave a tea-towel. Not that I am really advocating eliminating it – the cotton growers must get some huge benefit out of this – at least I hope they do. I have to say that I probably understood this a little better back in the day when tablets were more fragile and there was no such thing as a gel-cap, but ok, maybe I should just go with this as a hold-over from another era, and be glad to be so connected to my own past. Yeah. I’ll go with that. Besides, this morning, I got to play Guitar-in-the-Bottle instead of going into panic mode for a guitar.

The Chesapeake Bay Bridge – which is dedicated to someone, and thus has another name altogether that few people know or use – has been designated one of the scariest bridges in America. Maybe the world, but that would be my perspective in view that most of the time my world is pretty much restrained by The Bridge. I have dear friends and many reasons to go to the other side, but since I quit my job over there, I can put most of the things off, and I can bribe my friends to come to the Eastern Shore – well, most often. Yesterday, I had to go – singing low? I don’t think so – windows open, irritating music on the radio, reciting the Gettysburg Address – alright, I made it. Not happily, but safely. I really will do anything for a friend. It is always worth it.

However, I received a very special gift yesterday….the ultimate reason to travel The Bridge until it doesn’t bother me any more. I may go again today. Trader Joe’s has MACARONS. The rumor is true, I’m afraid. I can be bribed with chocolate, but I can be had for macarons. Macarons stand in the top ten reasons I would move to France. I haven’t checked, but I may have already used macarons for a guitar. I have 50 some odd days left, and may do it again…don’t laugh at me. I’m pretty good about owning up to my weaknesses – though it has been said that I never make a mistake. I don’t think I said that. It has just been said. I would have completed making this guitar with macarons instead of paying tribute to one of the ingredients – but, well…the other dozen met with an accident last night, or something. Let us just say that Trader Jacques macarons have been thoroughly taste tested.